Julia Elena Fortún Melgarejo (9 October 1929 – 5 December 2016) was a Bolivian

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human species; as well as the ...

anthropologist An anthropologist is a scientist engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropologists study aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms, values ...

folklorist Folklore studies (also known as folkloristics, tradition studies or folk life studies in the UK) is the academic discipline devoted to the study of folklore. This term, along with its synonyms, gained currency in the 1950s to distinguish the ac ...

, and

ethnomusicologist Ethnomusicology is the multidisciplinary study of music in its cultural context. The discipline investigates social, cognitive, biological, comparative, and other dimensions. Ethnomusicologists study music as a reflection of culture and investiga ...

, pioneer in this last field in her country. She was born in the city of

Sucre Sucre (; ) is the ''de jure'' capital city of Bolivia, the capital of the Chuquisaca Department and the sixth most populous city in Bolivia. Located in the south-central part of the country, Sucre lies at an elevation of . This relatively high ...

but lived in

La Paz La Paz, officially Nuestra Señora de La Paz (Aymara language, Aymara: Chuqi Yapu ), is the seat of government of the Bolivia, Plurinational State of Bolivia. With 755,732 residents as of 2024, La Paz is the List of Bolivian cities by populati ...

for most of her life. She obtained an anthropology degree in

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires, controlled by the government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Argentina. It is located on the southwest of the Río de la Plata. Buenos Aires is classified as an Alpha− glob ...

Argentina Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...

, and her doctorate in history in the Universidad Central de Madrid in

Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...

. Back in

Bolivia Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in central South America. The country features diverse geography, including vast Amazonian plains, tropical lowlands, mountains, the Gran Chaco Province, w ...

, Fortún studied

music Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all hum ...

in the Academia Eduardo Berdecio and subsequently in the Conservatorio Nacional de Música in the city of

.* She died on 5 December 2016 at the age of 87. In June 1973 she participated in the

Primer Congreso del Hombre Andino Primer Congreso del Hombre Andino (First Conference of the Andean Man) was an academic conference in northern Chile organized by the northern branch of the University of Chile in June 1973. Its subject was the Indigenous societies of the Andean wor ...

held in northern Chile. There she coordinated alongside

Oreste Plath César Octavio Müller Leiva (13 August 1907 – 24 July 1996), mostly known under the pseudonym Oreste Plath, was a Chilean writer and folklorist. In 1942, he began studying folklore, making trips to neighboring countries like Bolivia, Braz ...

the symposium on "Basic problems of the study of Andean folklore". However, the

1973 Chilean coup d'état The 1973 Chilean coup d'état () was a military overthrow of the democratic socialist president of Chile Salvador Allende and his Popular Unity (Chile), Popular Unity coalition government. Allende, who has been described as the first Marxist ...

on September 11 hindered the publication of the

conference proceedings In academia and librarianship, conference proceedings are a collection of academic papers published in the context of an academic conference or workshop. Conference proceedings typically contain the contributions made by researchers at the confer ...

Works

Among the books written by Julia Elena Fortún are: * ''Música indígena de Bolivia'' (1947) * ''Nuestra música folklórica'' (1948) * ''Manual para la recolección de material folklórico'' (1957) * ''La danza de los diablos'' (1960) * ''La mujer aymara'' (1964)

References

1929 births 2016 deaths 20th-century Bolivian historians Scholars of Andean civilizations Ethnomusicologists Bolivian women anthropologists People from Sucre Bolivian women historians Women ethnomusicologists {{ethnomusicologist-stub